Adapting our tournament formats to an expanding pool of Pokemon

[Sapientia]

I think the increasing number of threats is not the only reason, why match up became more important since BW. At least as important is match preview.
In past generation you only knew your own team and therefore only you knew the most dangerous threats and had more options to outplay them. If you opponent doesn't know that his Dragon Dance Gyarados just wins, he plays it more carefully and will give you less chances to blow it up / spread status / we.

I don't really like the idea of changing our 6on6 format to something with sideboard and team locked Bo3. Also is sideboarding really solving our match up issues? VGC uses bring 6 pick 4 and isn't more competitive than our metagames and has even worse match up problems. You will also create a lot of 50/50 situation which come down to if he picks A my X wins and if he picks B my Y does. Also changes after the first match will be a guessing game assuming your opponents adjustments.

It seems more preferable to adjust our tournaments formats in a way that tolerants more variance.
The format of OST isn't really good either way. It's not just team match up, but also luck with pairings and hax in the matches. You can play perfectly, but still get eliminated in round 1. We for example could play swiss instead of single elimination to allow people to lose some games.
Grand Slam, Tour, etc have enough matches in order to qualify for play offs, so that's not too much of a deal. Play offs themselves are a problem, because they somehow have to played single elimination.

 

[Arcticblast]

I don't really like the idea of changing our 6on6 format to something with sideboard and team locked Bo3. Also is sideboarding really solving our match up issues? VGC uses bring 6 pick 4 and isn't more competitive than our metagames and has even worse match up problems. You will also create a lot of 50/50 situation which come down to if he picks A my X wins and if he picks B my Y does. Also changes after the first match will be a guessing game assuming your opponents adjustments.

While I won't argue competitiveness (which is a pretty vague term), it's hard to say that it has worse matchup problems when having two Pokemon on the field at once alleviates a lot of matchup issues. Wolfe Glick played a match on stream where his opponent brought Mega Gengar versus Mega Kangaskhan, a matchup that almost always results in a dead Kangaskhan, and still was able to win the match without losing more than a single Pokemon - and Kang didn't faint. Straying from just VGC to doubles formats as a whole, last night's streamed set for the Doubles Seasonal is also an example - kamikaze17's Sylveon had a great matchup against Pinoy Pwnage's Trick Room team, but it almost immediately fainted due to a good play by Pinoy - while it did pick up a double KO, losing it forced kamikaze's much faster team to rely on Shaymin-S's Air Slash to win the game.

As for the concern of bringing the proper Pokemon: this is one of the draws of the bo3 format. One of the best aspects of the VGC format is the ability to use information gained from game 1 to win games 2 and 3, and pretty much everything from moveset to speed investment can be gleaned in this way; on top of this, a surprise set packs much less of a punch when you know it's coming.

But I suppose all that isn't super related to the topic. I'm just getting defensive because I think Doubles is just plain better than singles :(

It seems more preferable to adjust our tournaments formats in a way that tolerants more variance.
The format of OST isn't really good either way. It's not just team match up, but also luck with pairings and hax in the matches. You can play perfectly, but still get eliminated in round 1. We for example could play swiss instead of single elimination to allow people to lose some games.
Grand Slam, Tour, etc have enough matches in order to qualify for play offs, so that's not too much of a deal. Play offs themselves are a problem, because they somehow have to played single elimination.

As much as I like Swiss, it has its own problem in its length and, as a result, the commitment required by the players. In the 2014 Doubles Circuit, we used Swiss for our big tournaments, and people often just dropped out as soon as they realized they had no chance of winning the whole thing, because they simply didn't want to put in the effort round after round when there wouldn't be any payout. I think a good compromise would be to go with double elimination, but double elim is even longer, and I don't think we want OST stretching into June again...

 

[nyttyn]

Dismissing the fact that it doesn't remedy the hugest issue of matchup (how toxic one-sided matches are), Swiss is definitely one of those things people love to champion, that sounds amazing on paper, but in practice is freaking awful. Every single experinece I've had, either hosting or playing in a Swiss tournament for various games (smash, pokemon, RSO, etc), it's always wound up with scheduling headaches up the arse. Swiss only works in a closed enviroment where you can force people to actually play their matches in a timely matter - online, it's already a nightmare in single/double elimiation to get people to line up their timezones (especially on smogon, what with us enjoying a world-wide playerbase with wildly conflicting time zones), and that's just for single matches. For many of the reasons that Arcticblast has stated as well, people have a nasty tendency to lose any and all motivation to try and play once they wind up with a W:L ratio which makes victory or even placing reasonably impossible, which has a rather cascading effect. These are all already huge problems in local swiss tournaments (finding people to match, people wandering off for snacks, people simply leaving without saying anything), but online play just takes all of those issues and magnifies them on top of the "needing two people online at the same time and able to play" issue.

I mean no offense to the tournament directors/hosts, and if they'd be willing to go with the incredible logistical headache that would be Swiss I'd be impressed, but smogon tournaments are so freaking huge and have a sufficent amount of johns/logistical headaches that I don't think any of them would even agree to running tournaments in Swiss fashion in the first place. It's not just that Swiss takes forever, and it's not just that it has issues with people dropping out, but it magnifies all the problems smogon already has with people having issues with scheduling and magnifies it by a factor equivalent to the number of matches required per round.

 

[Sapientia]

Let me address your concerns

• People lose motivation after having a too bad W:L to cut

I know they do, but to be honest: does it matter? So let's say we decide to have an X-2 top cut (arbitrary example) and people don't want to play anymore after X-3, because they are basically out. Does that hurt in any ways? Does it change the outcome of the tournament? Not at all. We just care about the winner, there are not curcuit points or anything to be gained if you do not cut. Therefore we could even kick them people ourself, because they are out and having less matches makes life easier.
This was a huge issue in a 10 man Round Robin tour I used to hosted on the german forums, because people not giving a fuck anymore, but still had to play people who are in a good position gave away easy wins. But in Swiss people with a bad record only play other people with bad records, so just fuck them all. Who cares who wins this matches.

• Widly conflicted timezones

Considering we would play a 500+ people Swiss. So we would probably use different flights anyways and besides randomizing them, we can just sort them by time zones. Having let's say two american, one european and one asian/oceanian flight would make scheduling way easier. You might argue that people from region XY will be able to cut easier, maybe that's true, but that's still better than single elimination.

• Swiss takes forever

"Forever" is a pretty relative measurement. Assuming nine rounds of Swiss, top 64 cut, and 1 week per round, it would take 15 weeks to complete OST. 512 people single elimination has 9 rounds. Round 1 deadline is usually 3 weeks, every other round has 1 week. Makese 12 weeks. So 3 more weeks is forever?
You might say 1 week deadline per swiss round is not enough. Let's make that 2 weeks. Make 24 weeks. That's 6 weeks longer than last years Grand Slam. But obisouly we wouldn't do 2 weeks deadlines. Maybe a bit longer for the first 3 rounds, but we will have less participants after that.
Another problem I can see is that we can't grant extensions in swiss, because of the way the match making works. But maybe it's not too bad if deadlines become deadlines again, considering the massive amount of johning we saw in classic. People only john as much as you allow them to john.

• Swiss not solving all problems with match up

Of course not. But sideboarding does? There is no solution that will fix every problem with ease. We probably will have to adjust more things to make the whole thing better. I personally think that reducing the power through tiering and allowing more variance in tournaments it's a better solution than sideboarding. I just don't see how 6+2 solves all the issues. Might need to go to 6+4, but that would allow you to use two cores plus two mons that fit on both teams. But this won't solve match up as you and your opponent will have more or less two teams to choose. 6+6 would be ridiculous, I hope everyone sees why.

 

[Bughouse]

I'll start by saying that Swiss is awesome... for a live event. Maybe it could be use for tour qualifiers. But it is not remotely usable for something like OST, obviously. In any case I'm gonna run down the list:

Let me address your concerns

• People lose motivation after having a too bad W:L to cut

I know they do, but to be honest: does it matter? So let's say we decide to have an X-2 top cut (arbitrary example) and people don't want to play anymore after X-3, because they are basically out. Does that hurt in any ways? Does it change the outcome of the tournament? Not at all. We just care about the winner, there are not curcuit points or anything to be gained if you do not cut. Therefore we could even kick them people ourself, because they are out and having less matches makes life easier.
This was a huge issue in a 10 man Round Robin tour I used to hosted on the german forums, because people not giving a fuck anymore, but still had to play people who are in a good position gave away easy wins. But in Swiss people with a bad record only play other people with bad records, so just fuck them all. Who cares who wins this matches.

These matches matter because Swiss inherently needs a lot of tiebreakers. When they don't happen, it's always at least a little bad and can be really, really bad. Even more importantly, people often don't inform anyone that they are dropping out, they just leave after those pairings have been made, which results in a ton of activity wins, which is most definitely damaging to the integrity of the format.

• Widly conflicted timezones

Considering we would play a 500+ people Swiss. So we would probably use different flights anyways and besides randomizing them, we can just sort them by time zones. Having let's say two american, one european and one asian/oceanian flight would make scheduling way easier. You might argue that people from region XY will be able to cut easier, maybe that's true, but that's still better than single elimination.

Not much of a point either way. I already began by saying Swiss would never work for a spread-out event, and for a live event, people are already making timezones work somehow.

• Swiss takes forever

"Forever" is a pretty relative measurement. Assuming nine rounds of Swiss, top 64 cut, and 1 week per round, it would take 15 weeks to complete OST. 512 people single elimination has 9 rounds. Round 1 deadline is usually 3 weeks, every other round has 1 week. Makese 12 weeks. So 3 more weeks is forever?
You might say 1 week deadline per swiss round is not enough. Let's make that 2 weeks. Make 24 weeks. That's 6 weeks longer than last years Grand Slam. But obisouly we wouldn't do 2 weeks deadlines. Maybe a bit longer for the first 3 rounds, but we will have less participants after that.
Another problem I can see is that we can't grant extensions in swiss, because of the way the match making works. But maybe it's not too bad if deadlines become deadlines again, considering the massive amount of johning we saw in classic. People only john as much as you allow them to john.

What is the purpose of moving to Swiss with a top 64 cut?! At that point you're still keeping around 6 rounds of elimination style tournament. You spend 9 rounds to cut out the first 3 ... only to join right back in where it started. Sure it lets you then get seeded bracket for the top 64, but this bracket will be 1) seeded terribly due to tons of tiebreaks anyway and 2) OST was never designed to be seeded anyway. That's part of the drama.

• Swiss not solving all problems with match up

Of course not. But sideboarding does? There is no solution that will fix every problem with ease. We probably will have to adjust more things to make the whole thing better. I personally think that reducing the power through tiering and allowing more variance in tournaments it's a better solution than sideboarding. I just don't see how 6+2 solves all the issues. Might need to go to 6+4, but that would allow you to use two cores plus two mons that fit on both teams. But this won't solve match up as you and your opponent will have more or less two teams to choose. 6+6 would be ridiculous, I hope everyone sees why.

Swiss actually does help address some matchup problems and I don't think you should have conceded on that point. It most definitely does help there. It's just impractical for all the other reasons above.

-----------------------------

As a side note about the proposed sideboard methods. It's a huuuuuge step away from cartridge play and should not be taken lightly by anyone who is in support of it right now. I mean, optically, it'd be better to go bring 6 pick 4 like VGC. That at least makes sense in game. But bring 8 pick 6 is a break from even that. You can't carry more than 6 mons at a time in game... It is fundamentally violating cartridge mechs.

 

[nyttyn]

As a side note about the proposed sideboard methods. It's a huuuuuge step away from cartridge play and should not be taken lightly by anyone who is in support of it right now. I mean, optically, it'd be better to go bring 6 pick 4 like VGC. That at least makes sense in game. But bring 8 pick 6 is a break from even that. You can't carry more than 6 mons at a time in game... It is fundamentally violating cartridge mechs.

For the record, it's not violating cartridge mechanics. You PM eachother your teams (or PM a trusted third party who PMs you both the teams), pick the six you're gonna bring, then start the match. The only headache is with leads, but that's easily solved by having the sim operate in a pick six ---> pick lead fashion. It's not as easy to do it over cart, and it adds more work for TDs if the players insist on a cart match, yes, but it's not impossible, and it doesn't violate any mechanics.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

He didn't say it violated any mechanics, only that it's a huge step away from conventional cartridge play. I'm interested in exploring double eliminations, helps reduce some of the odds of getting turbofucked out of a big tournament while still retaining the essence of Pokemon. Yeah you'd get fucked out of both matchups occasionally but certainly much less often. Creates drama too when you get two big names matching up in the loser's bracket.

 

[Hot N Cold]

"6+4" is against Pokemon roots in singles games, also I dont think this fix anything about team matchup worries because your opponent is playing under the same features. This thing probably makes the meta more overcentralized even, with the same Pokemon and core being spammed all-day long.

 

[Sapientia]

I'm not saying Swiss is perfect. But it's an option we should consider. And single elimination is just stupid, especially in a game like pokemon and without seeding

I'll start by saying that Swiss is awesome... for a live event. Maybe it could be use for tour qualifiers. But it is not remotely usable for something like OST, obviously. In any case I'm gonna run down the list:
These matches matter because Swiss inherently needs a lot of tiebreakers. When they don't happen, it's always at least a little bad and can be really, really bad. Even more importantly, people often don't inform anyone that they are dropping out, they just leave after those pairings have been made, which results in a ton of activity wins, which is most definitely damaging to the integrity of the format.

We could make an X-2 cut. Tiebreakers only matter for seeding then, since everyone with 2 or less loses will be in top cut, everyone with 3 or more is out.

Not much of a point either way. I already began by saying Swiss would never work for a spread-out event, and for a live event, people are already making timezones work somehow.

"I already said it doesn't work" is too dogmatic for me, sorry. I'm a guy who finds solutions to problems and doesn't bitch how something is "impossible". If it's "impossible" I make it possible.
Also: NB major has more participants than OST and Swiss works for it. Are the NB dudes smarter than us?

What is the purpose of moving to Swiss with a top 64 cut?! At that point you're still keeping around 6 rounds of elimination style tournament. You spend 9 rounds to cut out the first 3 ... only to join right back in where it started. Sure it lets you then get seeded bracket for the top 64, but this bracket will be 1) seeded terribly due to tons of tiebreaks anyway and 2) OST was never designed to be seeded anyway. That's part of the drama.

That's why I said assuming. If you wanted to do swiss, you would have to find a proper number of people for the top cut. Or just go with X-2 / X-1. Top 64 and X-2 (what I was proposing) would by the way mean ~40 players with a lot of them getting byes for round 1.
OST was never designed to be Bo3, so let's move back to Bo1 for tradition's sake

 

[teal6]

The title and OP (and subsequent direction of the thread) speak as if this problem is plaguing "all" the tournaments on Smogon, but I do not necessarily think that this is the case. It was mentioned (not really looking to refind the post) but this is mostly an OST problem. The formats of the other major tournaments almost, by definition, mitigate one-sidedness and "too many pokemon" problems by spreading out the risk over multiple games and qualifiers. It is statistically probable that any sort of "uneven matchup" will level out over a given number of games, and a good deal of tournaments do not even have that many pokemon to consider. As well, please remember that it is much easier to recall the 3 times you got burned by scald, and not the 7 times you avoided it. Point being, it's easier to remember when you had bad matchup and not even or better.

I think we should look at the individual majors more closely:

• OST: By definition, almost necessarily the one with the most issues regarding hax or bad matchup amplified by a larger pool of pokemon. The Bo3 format does not give a significant amount of time to "smooth" these things out. If any format really "needs" a revamping to make more "fair", then OST would be at the top of the list as Smogon's most prestigious tournament as far as I know
• SPL: The team format of the game gives plenty of space to negate the unfairness that is present with an ever growing pool of mons. Again, over a given period of time, matchup issues will solve themselves as it is likely they will be balanced on either end, i.e. your team will statistically be likely to have 5 good matchups and 5 bad ones in a 10v10 week, or whatever. There will almost necessarily be cognitive bias against this though as it is also likely that the same player on one team is the recipient of bad matchup (again, caused by "too many threats") for two, three, four weeks in a row. But this is not necessarily (in the philisophical sense) an impetus to change the format as I've stated, the team format preserves integrity in terms of sheer amount of encounters.
• Grand Slam: Quite simply does not have a "too many threats/pokemon" issue. While there may be anomalies in certain tiers, each one is almost entirely "smooth" with distribution of threats. Using just UU as an example, there are notable players in the tier that can construct teams able to adequately respond to every possible threat, and UU is by definition the tier with the most after OU (neglecting Ubers, which I will argue is vastly more centralized for better or worse, and DOU which most will agree is balanced around a handful of threats, their own brokenness disregarded for the moment)
• WCOP: Same argument as SPL because it's essentially the same thing. If we accept the argument I proposed there, the real unfairness of WCOP comes simply from nationality of the players, but that's an assumed and even wanted unfairness just like the real World Cup.
• Smogon Classic: Considering, from what I've seen, most of the "too many pokemon" considerations have started in Gen 6 (and more specifically, post-Aegislash XY/ORAS), Smogon Classic is going to be relatively immune to this worry for some time. Even next generation, when XY is added to the Classic roster, players are almost definitely going to have to perform well in 5 other Opens, most of which are considered fair from a matchup perspective (though certainly not from a "hax" perspective but this is aside from the point). Again, taking this point of view you can clearly see that having an unfair matchup in, at best, a fifth of your games is not a major issue and does not require wild reworking to make competitive.
• Smogon Tour: The sheer amount of games one must play even out unfairness. I think this is almost obvious in that the "best" players tend to rise to the playoffs where I can see the argument coming again that it is a bit unfair to have a Bo3 where it is difficult to prepare adequately due to the options available, so I'll concede that is a possibility definitely. Though I think, up to the playoffs, there is little worry as through several weeks the "best" players will almost certainly qualify over the rest.
• Frontier: Suffers from the same OST issue with regard to the limited amount of games and small number of losses allowed, compounded by Bo1 format. May suffer from this issue the worst.

So with all the "trophy" tournaments considered, the only real problems I see are with OST, the playoffs of Smogon Tour and the Frontier. As these are, from what I can gather, the two most prestigious tournaments on the site, and if I recall correctly Frontier isn't going to be around much longer. Should Frontier exist, I think we will necessarily have to suffer this issue as it is, by nature meant to be a grueling and almost impossible task.

So all the talk of "sideboard" really pertains to one major tournament and the playoffs to another, from what I can discern. And at that point, I think this is a drastic step to take. Is it a bit frustrating to be subject to matchup when in the playoffs after a long season? Certainly, but I think it is a bit premature to suggest a massive change to the structure of the playoffs to accommodate this. Though, I do admit that my own reasoning is as of yet immature and ill-thought out, mostly because I'm arguing this last point from the basis of "feeling" rather than deduction, which is always an error. But, this in mind, I suppose the main take away from this post should be that we should not consider a sweeping change to "the site's" tournaments, but really only one tournament and the last leg of another.

 

[Stratos]

I'm not saying Swiss is perfect. But it's an option we should consider. And single elimination is just stupid, especially in a game like pokemon and without seeding



We could make an X-2 cut. Tiebreakers only matter for seeding then, since everyone with 2 or less loses will be in top cut, everyone with 3 or more is out.




"I already said it doesn't work" is too dogmatic for me, sorry. I'm a guy who finds solutions to problems and doesn't bitch how something is "impossible". If it's "impossible" I make it possible.
Also: NB major has more participants than OST and Swiss works for it. Are the NB dudes smarter than us?



That's why I said assuming. If you wanted to do swiss, you would have to find a proper number of people for the top cut. Or just go with X-2 / X-1. Top 64 and X-2 (what I was proposing) would by the way mean ~40 players with a lot of them getting byes for round 1.
OST was never designed to be Bo3, so let's move back to Bo1 for tradition's sake

Im not kidding when i say a user went 1-2 in actual sets and got four activity wins to top cut the last swiss tournament we held (also the reason why it was the last swiss tournament we held). Less than half of the entrants lasted through the final round, it went from like 84 to 39 or something.

Swiss seriously doesnt work on smogon, we just have too much of a culture of signing up for tournaments and then dropping out whenever the fuck you feel like it (we've had people drop out of the top 12 of our double elim tournaments twice now, and top 24 another three. We've held two.)

 

[Harsha]

As someone who has not read the entirety of this thread but has recognized the same issues in the OP, I'd like to say that pretty much every competitive game has an issue of matchup. I can't think of a single one that does not. Aiming to "fix" matchup should not be done until we get to the point where matchup is a bigger deciding factor than skill is, which I believe you addressed.

To expand on what I said, I'll name games of different genres that all are considered competitive and all show a matchup issue. League of Legends has favorable lane matchups in which one champion can exert more pressure than another. Smash has character matchups which will favor one character in the neutral game/punish game. FPS games have matchup between weapons. The list goes on and on, but as you can see from these examples, not every player will be dealt an equal number of cards.

This extends to Pokemon. The game simply won't be fair for both players because teambuilding is an important aspect of the game. Ever. We can say that older generations were fair because we enjoyed those metagames, but the actuality is that no game of Pokemon was ever "fair." There were predetermined advantages for both players involved before the game even began.

---

I really hate the sideboard idea for multiple reasons. Though it might be petty, it really feels against the "spirit" of Pokemon in the 6v6 metagame. I honestly don't even feel as though it solves anything. I'll address the following scenarios in which it could be used:

- Both players see the entire extended playing field before the game. Suddenly the game becomes a 10v10 or an 8v8 or whatever the number is. This doesn't address matchup; it turns Pokemon into a bigger guessing game.
- Each player has a field of 10/8/x Pokemon to pick from and does so without seeing the opposing team. I'm honestly not sure what's different about this than just a 6v6 game. You're not doing anything with your extended playing field. It just exists.
- You have a pool of 10/8/x Pokemon to use within the entire Bo3. I think this just restricts your options for no real reason; you might just retain an inherent advantage through the series without giving the opponent a chance to adapt. Additionally, you can stack top tier threats on your team without any real consequence. Mix-and-match strategies for stall teams would thrive or you can pick a sweeper that you think would do well. It's still a guessing game.

---

My point with all the hypotheticals is that Pokemon will still always boil down to a guessing game. Teambuilding's presence makes this true. There's no real way to inject skill into the game. You simply need to deal with the fact that there will always be a guessing game when playing Pokemon.

You can somewhat circumvent these issues through statistics, as with more games comes a higher chance that matchup plays a lesser role. You can make OST a Bo5 tournament, though the time commitment might be too large for the average player. Then again, it's OST. I bet a ton of people would enter regardless.

At the end of the day, I don't think there is a better way to deal with matchup other than pruning the metagame from the council's position. The smaller the Pokemon pool, the lesser chance of matchup being an issue. At the end of the day, as long as the amount of good Pokemon is relatively small compared to the amount of available Pokemon, the metagame will be better. You can prepare for less with your team and worry less about matchup; while the pool of Pokemon under the top tier Pokemon will continue to grow with each coming generation, having a clearly defined upper echelon will shift the metagame towards a select group that you can realistically prepare for. I can't give a concrete example from Pokemon, but I believe the current problem is that there are too many good Pokemon rather than too many Pokemon in general. Some people bring up staleness, but you're going to have to choose "freshness" or competitiveness at some point.

This is simply something for tier leaders to address in whether they'd want to ban Pokemon to decrease matchup or whether they'd do so because said Pokemon are outright broken. I think at some point, banning a Pokemon to increase metagame diversity is a bad thing, and people who use this argument don't understand why having a set upper echelon is good.

---

Sorry for giving such a long post, but I just wanted to share my thoughts on the matter given that this thread brings up a lot of the reasons I thought competitive Pokemon might be unsustainable.

 

[Lemonade]

Anyone tried draft pick aka something like ban 2 pick 2 alternating that sounds like potential fun but takes 10 years also the pool of pokemon might be too small for 12 bans but that number can be tweaked

http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Game_modes#Captains_Mode

A single battle is probably too short for it to be worth that much work though so idk could run a live teambat tour to test it out I can supply $30